Once the country’s largest hospital, Old Cook County, an impressive 1912 Beaux-Arts structure, became familiar to millions of Americans as the setting for numerous films and TV programs including “The Fugitive” and “ER”. The facility was long the primary source of health care for Chicago’s poor and immigrant populations. But it also played a key role in the advancement of medicine by educating generations of health-care professionals and establishing innovations such as trauma and burn units, the diagnoses of sickle cell anemia, and the country’s first blood bank. But in 2001 the future of the hospital was in serious doubt, following the construction of its replacement right next door. To draw attention to the imminent threat, Landmarks Illinois listed Old Cook County as one of its Ten Most Endangered Historic Places in Illinois.

Although I could not find any proof that the Old Cook County Hospital is haunted, it was eerie to be around the old building at night.